Crooked Heart
by future-fangirl
Summary: How do you love crooked people with a crooked heart? What happens when it seems like time runs out? A story exploring Katniss learning that "life can be good again." Post-Mockingjay one-shot based on the poem "As I Walked Out One Evening" by W. H. Auden.


**Author Notes: I love the poem "As I Walked Out One Evening" and felt like it fit perfectly with the Hunger Games especially the relationship between Katniss and Peeta. The first part skips about a bit as this seems to fit her state of mind in this period. I was kind of experimenting with a little stream of consciousness in this one. You may notice that I never use the names of either Katniss or Peeta. I thought that was an interesting choice but hopefully it isn't too confusing.**

As I walked out one evening,

Walking down Bristol Street,

The crowds upon the pavement

Were fields of harvest wheat.

The people down below looked like fields of wheat. Lurid, candy-colored wheat, it is true, but standing on the roof of the training center nothing about the crowds looked human. That was of course the Capitol. Everything was obscure, obscene and deadly.

"Aren't they ridiculous?" she questioned. She was going to fight in the Arena tomorrow and here she was discussing the Capitol as if it was a benign crowd not a bloodthirsty throng of people sending them to their deaths.

"Yes," he replied. The conversation from earlier about not being a piece in their games struck her. Perhaps this was what he was talking about.

She was already tired. The Capitol's air stifled her rife with the scent of blood though it was probably the perfume, cloying and sweet, which covered up the normal stench of so many people. She wanted District 12 with the scent of coal and sweat and home.

And down by the brimming river

I heard a lover sing

Under an arch of the railway:

'Love has no ending.

She had believed it once. That love didn't end. Long ago before her father died before her mother left her and before she almost died of starvation. She had believed it when she had known he loved her, even though he had never actually said the words. She had even believed it when Gale had told her. But for her personally those words meant nothing. Or at least that had been what she told herself. Only Prim mattered. And then it had gotten to the point that no one could reach into her heart and wake the dead coldness inside.

But then he had come back hating her and it seemed as if Snow himself was mocking her. He had twisted the sweetest, purest love into something dark and dreadful. She wanted her sweet, strong, intelligent charming boy back. But he was gone. Snow had killed him. And she would kill Snow. She would destroy the man who had been the cause of all her misery.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you

Till China and Africa meet,

And the river jumps over the mountain

And the salmon sing in the street,

She had thought that love was endless, boundless and unending. She hadn't realized how much she counted on it until it was gone. Then she had thrown herself into fighting, into trying to forget. He had been willing to die for her. She had been willing to die for him. She refused to label how she felt. Examining her feelings was dangerous. It reminded her of the time she had been terribly sick and she had refused to let her mother take her temperature.

But after all he hadn't really seen her. She wasn't that perfect person he had seen. Maybe she wasn't a Mutt. But that didn't mean she didn't deserve to die. Now he saw how ordinary and ugly and scarred she was. How anyone would love her now seemed a miracle. Even her own mother didn't really love her. He had loved her through the lens of the girl with the silver voice and the two braids. He didn't see that she wasn't that person. Now of course he did and that is why he hated her.

He had never said the words "I love you" when they weren't being filmed. There had always been something dignified in the way he demonstrated his feelings. He had never been ashamed of them. He had never been ashamed of her. He could be hard in his love. He had pushed her before the Quell with the single-minded determination of one who knew that he had nothing to lose. She would live. He would die. But that didn't matter. Because she had already made another choice. She would spend that one lifetime she had trying to be worthy.

'I'll love you till the ocean

Is folded and hung up to dry

And the seven stars go squawking

Like geese about the sky.

She had always thought love was a waste of time. It didn't pay for food, keep you warm at night or prevent you from dying. She had spent her whole life only expending as much love as she could afford to lose. And in the end she realized she had been wrong. It hurt just as much to look back and realize that she might have been happy if only she had let herself feel. But it was too late.

She was alone except for Greasy Sae and Haymitch and the boy who planted primroses. Prim was gone. Finnick was gone. Rue was gone. Gale was gone and what is more her once boundless trust in him was gone. Her mother was gone. The boy with the bread was gone. District 12 was gone.

'The years shall run like rabbits,

For in my arms I hold

The Flower of the Ages,

And the first love of the world.'

She had always wondered what people saw in her. Even before she had been marred and scared she hadn't been especially beautiful. She was small, thin, olive-skinned and scowling. Those weren't characteristics she had been brought up to value. It was the beauty of Glimmer, Cashmere, and Madge that made people stop and stare.

And yet she had been chosen to be the Mockingjay. It hadn't been for her pleasant personality, charm or good looks. It must have been for the dogged determination and sense of justice. She still didn't understand.

Yet at the end, she had lost everything. She had lost every good thing. She was waiting for the end. Waiting for that moment in which she would be free. Like the lover in the song she had sung.

But all the clocks in the city

Began to whirr and chime:

'O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer Time.

She had thought Snow was her enemy. And he had been. She had thought Coin was her enemy and she had killed her. But after all her enemy had been Time. And death. Time had watched and waited and each moment when she had thought she could endure it had sent something new her way. If she had just had Time she might have figured out things on her own. She might have realized before it was too late what was right in front.

Now she had plenty of time. The frenetic pace of war had ceased. She sat in a chair all day. Time moved on but so imperceptibly that she would sit and watch the sunbeams moves across the floor and up the hideous yellow wallpaper. Snow was dead, Coin was dead but Time was not dead.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare

Where Justice naked is,

Time watches from the shadow

And coughs when you would kiss.

In her nightmares, time seemed endless. It felt like each dream lasted for centuries and the horrible scenes that played over and over in her head never entirely left. They lingered out of sight behind the eyes waiting to overcome her.

She thought about the kisses in the cave and on the beach and how each time she had been interrupted. There had been endless moments of no interruptions but those times in which she had felt that _something_ had an expiration date. Certainly now she would never feel it again. It had been something hard fought and strange and delicate.

Even those kisses had been somehow so much more than just a kiss. She knew what those were. The kisses she knew of comfort, of sympathy, of affection, of sadness, of pain and of artifice. But only those had felt like her whole self was wrapped up in the meeting of lips. Body and mind had been simply caught into what was and she had surrendered to the feeling of being lost and yet found.

'In headaches and in worry

Vaguely life leaks away,

And Time will have his fancy

To-morrow or to-day.

She had spent so much time in the past worrying about the future. Worrying about putting food on the table. Worrying about dying. Worrying about her loved ones dying. Worrying about everything.

She thought about the time on the roof in which they had promised to freeze in time. She thought about the pearl. She thought about ducktails and sugar cubes. Time had taken all those things away. And she hadn't appreciated them. She hadn't taken the advice of one of the greatest people she had ever known and seized it before it left. Finnick had and even though he left Annie he had left something behind. Annie wasn't going to be alone forever.

'Into many a green valley

Drifts the appalling snow;

Time breaks the threaded dances

And the diver's brilliant bow.

Rue had died and she had buried her in flowers. There were primroses planted in her garden. The meadow was now a graveyard. The stench of roses still seemed to linger in her house from the roses Snow had left.

She remembered that dance Plutarch had cut into. It had been just like all the other dances she had been at. But it had also been one of those moments she might have snatched at if only she had the courage. But it was too late. She would never dance again. So many dances, so many smiles and laughs and so much anger. She had thought that the hand she had been dealt was bad. She hadn't realized how much she would kill to go back in time.

She hadn't been able to pick up a bow since she had killed Coin. It brought back memories of murder and blood and of nightlock and how he had stopped her from killing herself. She didn't understand why. He didn't love her anymore. Gale had loved her and yet he would have done that. And now she was too tired.

'O plunge your hands in water,

Plunge them in up to the wrist;

Stare, stare in the basin

And wonder what you've missed.

Sometimes she imagined the life she might have had if Prim hadn't been reaped. She imagined growing up and marrying Gale and living in the Seam with dark haired, dark eyed and olive skinned children. She imagined it all and felt as if it would never have happened. Perhaps it might have. But she would have always been a spectator. Gale would have always wanted more from her and she would have always retreated far enough away to be safe. They would have fought and argued and then been left in the dark. She didn't believe they would have been happy together.

She thought more and more of pictures she couldn't have. She thought about a toasting with her boy with the bread and even of a world in which she could have had someday very far in the future little dark haired or blonde haired children. They were never things she had wanted. But now that she could never have them she found she wanted them. She had always wanted the things she couldn't have. All of that had been destroyed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

The desert sighs in the bed,

And the crack in the tea-cup opens

A lane to the land of the dead.

So many normal things made her depressed. The china dishes with the special pattern of primroses and rue that Effie in her blind eagerness had sent her not long after the games haunted her. The bed she had slept in reminded her of nights on the train when she had slept peacefully. Prim's little cracked mug in which she had drunk her tea every morning even after they could afford more expensive crockery.

She hadn't opened her closet filled with the beautiful clothing Cinna had made for her or opened Prim's room except to cry over how neat and perfect everything was. The clothing was still hanging neatly in the closet as if their owner would walk in anytime. The dead haunted everything around her.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes

And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,

And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,

And Jill goes down on her back.

It had all been so horrifying and she still wasn't sure what all of it had been all about. What had been the purpose of the Games? Some pedantic professor would probably write dozens of papers about it someday. They would dissect it all from every aspect. They would talk about economics, class, social structures and distress. They would reduce everything into neat words and categories.

But they would never, never understand what it was like to live it. They would probably judge her, she judged herself, but they would never understand her. How could they? She supposed that someday school children would sit down to one of those textbooks and hear all of it reduced to mere words. All the screams and blood and tears reduced to words.

'O look, look in the mirror?

O look in your distress:

Life remains a blessing

Although you cannot bless.

It took her a long time to realize that life could be a blessing. It started perhaps with the primroses. That was the day she woke up and took a shower. Then the memory book, painful as it was, reminded her off all the wonderful people she had met. It reminded her that they had died for her to keep on living. It didn't seem fair that she had been spared when they had not. She realized how little power she really had in the scope of things.

She slowly started to realize that Snow hadn't really succeeded in destroying the boy with the bread. They were scarred, irreparably so, but she saw him in the soft smile, the hands that gently held hers, the way he held her when she woke up during nightmares. It gave her a glimmer of hope to see that he was slowly coming back to her. He would never be the same, she wouldn't either, but she no longer felt as if a dead man resided in the body of the one she had once realized she would be broken without.

She hated mirrors. Hated the way they highlighted her scarred body and sadness. But as the years passed she saw the beauty in the scars. She saw that they represented how she had fought. They were battle scars. She hadn't done what she set out to do. She had failed to save Prim. But perhaps it wasn't entirely her fault. Perhaps the fact that she was only human and didn't have the ability to change everything. At least that was what he told her.

'O stand, stand at the window

As the tears scald and start;

You shall love your crooked neighbor

With your crooked heart.'

She could feel her skin burning with tears one night. She had woken up with a terrible nightmare of bombs and sobbing and Prim gazing reproachfully at her. He had held her as she sobbed just as she held him in the aftermath of an episode. He didn't tell her things were ok. They weren't. Still it was such a comfort. More than a comfort. It was almost the only thing giving her hope. He was after all her dandelion in the spring, her hope that maybe someday life would be good. It was the night she finally admitted to herself that she loved him. Not just as a friend or ally but as a lover.

It still took time to say it. On the night that she felt the hunger spread through her she realized that there was time to savor all the sensations that seemed to bubble up inside. There was no one to interrupt. Part of her wanted to run and hide. She had never been so vulnerable. She had never been so naked, both literally and figuratively, and it terrified her. But she wasn't alone. He was just as naked, just as vulnerable and just as scarred.

Afterward she lay in the quiet darkness feeling the weightlessness of having let go and allowed herself to be herself. Allowing herself to feel pleasure, something that had always scared her far more than pain had been a revelation to her. She realized that somehow this would have happened anyway. She didn't know how. Practically it seemed impossible. But she had stopped caring if it was practical. It was meant to be.

He whispered softly, hope in the tone, "You love me, real or not real?"

He knew she did. He knew exactly what that night had meant to her. It had meant facing her deepest fears of vulnerability and she wouldn't do that lightly. Still there had been too much confusion in the past to count on anything.

"Real," she whispered back. She wanted to say so much. She wanted to paint all her thoughts into words but she didn't know how. She had never been very good with words. But he knew the significance of that one word.

It was that realness, that love, that convinced her to get married. It was just a simple toasting with only Greasy Sae and Haymitch to watch. She had thought about inviting her mother but suspected she wouldn't come. She didn't think she could handle her mother leave her again. Johanna was going on an extended trip to the out district lands. Annie and her son were recovering from a bad case of the flu and besides she would likely have come apart at seeing the similarities with her own wedding. Greasy Sae had beamed uncharacteristically brightly and even Haymitch had nodded at her as if she had finally done something right. But it had been his face, illuminated by the firelight and an expression of pure happiness, that had made her voice tremble with emotions and a few tears fall from her eyes. Somehow they had come to this moment.

It was late, late in the evening,

The lovers they were gone;

The clocks had ceased their chiming,

And the deep river ran on.

She often reviewed her life in an endless loop. There were so many moments and so many mistakes that she never could escape. Those were the days she lay in bed and listened to the large clock in the hall ring out hour after hour in the empty house. Still things did get easier. Life had a way of going on regardless of her feelings.

The day she sat in the meadow and watched her children play was the day she realized that life had come full circle. It had started on a rainy day. The day she had almost lost her life and instead had found it. She remembered watching the strange Capitol people looking like candy fields and compared it to the meadow where the dandelion bloom. She remembered the times that love had destroyed her. But she also remembered the times it had saved her. That day in the meadow love was enough. More than she could have dreamed of.

 **End Note: This is my first fanfic for this fandom that I posted on AO3.** Hopefully **I didn't go too OOC. Katniss is a hard person to write about since she tends to be a pretty unreliable narrator and is a very complex character.**


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